Includes bibliographical references (pages [353]-354).

Peril -- Part I : The foreigner's home. The dead of September 11 ; The foreigner's home ; Racism and fascism ; Home ; Wartalk ; The war on error ; A race in mind : the press in deed ; Moral inhabitants ; The price of wealth, the cost of care ; The habit of art ; The individual artist ; Arts advocacy ; Sarah Lawrence commencement address ; The slavebody and the blackbody ; Harlem on my mind : contesting memory--meditation on museums, culture, and integration ; Women, race, and memory ; Literature and public life ; The Nobel lecture in literature ; Cinderella's stepsisters ; The future of time : literature and diminished expectations -- Interlude : Black matters. Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. ; Race matters ; Black matter(s) ; Unspeakable things unspoken : the Afro-American presence in American literature ; Academic whispers ; Gertrude Stein and the difference she makes ; Hard, true, and lasting -- Part II : God's language. James Baldwin eulogy ; The site of memory ; God's language ; Grendel and his mother ; The writer before the page ; The trouble with paradise ; On "Beloved" ; Chinua Achebe ; Introduction of Peter Sellars ; Tribute to Romare Bearden ; Faulkner and women ; The source of self-regard ; Rememory ; Memory, creation, and fiction ; Goodbye to all that : race, surrogacy, and farewell ; Invisible ink : reading the writing and writing the reading.

An anthology of the author's essays, speeches, and commentary on society, culture, and art includes her powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King, Jr., and her poignant eulogy for James Baldwin.